The Ticking Tower
by TheInvisibleQuestion
Summary: "Beware the twenty-fifth." A warning inside a grain silo leads the Doctor and Rose to an alien invasion and a friend of the Doctor's. Second in the Pete's World series.
1. Chapter 1: Fieldwork

**Chapter**** 1**

**Fieldwork**

_In an obscure corner of the universe, the last gap between realities coughed once and snapped shut, leaving a tiny shuttle and its single pilot lost in an unfamiliar world._

* * *

><p>Rose yanked on her shoes and flew out the door. She was late for work, which usually didn't bother her, except that they were <em>actually<em> doing field work today. Some reports had come in from just out of Bristol, and Rose and Jake were assigned to investigate.

"The Doctor's going with you," Jake announced the moment Rose walked into her office.

Rose frowned. "Says who?"

"Says him. And your dad." He handed Rose his stunner. "There hasn't been any alien _anything_ since you got back."

"Why aren't you going?"

Jake scooted out from behind the desk to reveal a clunky leg brace. "Ski accident in Norway over the weekend. I'm gonna miss all the fun. But I'll be in the Tower for your mission."

"You're gonna make me go on a mission by myself?"

"You're not by yourself, Rose. I told you, the Doctor's going with you."

Rose just glared.

"It's not like I _meant_ to twist my leg skiing. Go on, you're gonna be late, and I gotta get up to the Tower." He stood up and limped to the door. Rose strapped on the extra gun and stalked out to Torchwood's Arsenal—an old warehouse that was made over into a storeroom for the autos and equipment used by Torchwood's finest.

The Doctor was already there, dressed in the standard all-black uniform, trying to convince the weapons officer that he _didn__'__t_ need a gun.

"You don't have to use it, Dr. Smith, but Torchwood policy states you have to have it while you're in the field."

"Give it up, Doctor. If you don't take it, you can't come along," Rose said, hoping he'd choose his no-gun policy over his desire to investigate aliens, even though she knew he wouldn't.

"Fine." He took the stunner-laser from the officer, checked to make sure it was set to stun, and strapped it on. "Are we going?"

"In a minute. I need the brief first."

"Got it already."

Rose huffed. "We don't have a jeep."

He held up a set of keys.

"_Fine_, we're going. Do you have your earpiece?"

"In my pocket."

"Put it on." Rose took the keys from him and went to start the jeep. She double-checked to make sure her earpiece was secure and turned it on. "Tower, this is Rose Tyler."

"Got you, Rose," Jake confirmed as the Doctor took the passenger seat.

"Tower, this is John Smith," he said, looking awkward.

"Confirmed, Dr. Smith," Jake replied.

The Doctor nodded and took off the earpiece, holding it carefully in his palm.

"You're supposed to wear it all the time," Rose said irritably as she drove out of the Arsenal.

"It doesn't make you nervous?"

"I trust Pete." She turned onto the main road to Bristol. "So, what's your guess?"

"My guess?"

"What do you think's really going on?"

"I haven't seen anything yet."

"Based on the reports."

"Oh, come on. Reports? Half of them don't know what they're seeing."

"It's a game, okay?" Rose gripped the wheel a little harder in irritation. "Something to pass the time, since it's going to be a couple of hours before we get there."

There was silence in the jeep for a few moments before the Doctor asked, "Rose, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"How are your mirrors?"

"Fine."

"I've known you long enough to know when something's wrong, Rose."

"I'm fine," she repeated, but she knew she didn't sound very convincing at all. She could feel her hands starting to shake a little.

"Let me drive," he said.

"You aren't licenced!"

"I can drive a TARDIS. I can drive three hundred different classes of space ship. And I _was_ licenced to drive a car, before I came here."

She didn't make a move to pull off the road, but gripped the wheel harder. "I'm. Fine."

He didn't press the issue. The rest of the drive consisted of awkward silence punctuated by comments on the passing landscape, and Rose wished he hadn't brought up the mirrors. The mirrors had been perfectly normal after she'd gone to his flat and thrown that mirror at him. Not that he'd know; he'd left her alone in her flat and they hadn't spoken for days. He hadn't told her _anything_, and that wouldn't have bothered her if it wasn't for the way he'd talked about the curly-haired River Song woman.

"Rose, you're going to miss the turn," the Doctor commented, and it took Rose longer than usual to register his comment. She slammed on the brakes and veered around the corner, throwing him against the door of the jeep. He didn't remark on her driving, but she could see he was a little more apprehensive, and he warned her well in advance now of every turn they had to make.


	2. Chapter 2: The Writing on the Wall

**Chapter**** 2**

**The ****Writing ****on ****the ****Wall**

By the time they reached their destination, Rose was ready to scream. She did _not_ need commentary on her driving.

"Tower," she said into her earpiece, turning it on. "This is Rose Tyler, checking in from our destination."

"Got you, Rose," Jake replied. "Stay on with us; we don't know what's out there. Did you kick Dr. Smith out onto the side of the road somewhere?"

Rose shot a glare at the Doctor. "No, he's just _not __putting __his __earpiece __on_."

The man in question frowned, but put his earpiece on anyway. "Dr. John Smith, reporting for duty."

"Confirmed, Dr. Smith."

"We're going to have a look around, Tower. Looks pretty normal from out here."

"Be careful, Rose."

Rose motioned for the Doctor to follow her. The abandoned grain silo loomed overhead, blocking out the sun. The door wouldn't open for Rose, but the Doctor had no trouble opening it with a bit of help from his sonic screwdriver. Rose ignored it; she was determined to keep the domestics out of her field work.

Inside the silo, Rose found it hard to believe there were aliens. The floor was still covered in grain an inch thick, with little piles around the edges. "I don't see anything alien here. Unless the aliens are some kind of biped cow."

"Rose, look at this," the Doctor said.

"Writing on the wall?"

"It looks similar to Barrian script, but I'm having trouble deciphering it."

"Well, you don't have the translation matrix in your head."

"I don't need the translation matrix in my head. Had to learn it all the hard way; the translation matrix just helps with fluency. But this isn't the same universe; I'm not surprised I can't understand it."

"Looks more like an animal got trapped in here. There're scratches all over these walls."

"Trapped?" He looked up, and Rose followed his gaze. "Those must be the chains it was hanging from when it wrote that. The writing's upside down."

"So, are you gonna stand on your head?" Rose covered her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing.

"Stand on my—of course I'm not going to stand on my head." He pointed his small torch up at the chains. "They're a bit high, but I think I can reach them."

"You're gonna hang upside down by your feet, then? I hope you know that human bodies don't really appreciate that sort of thing."

"Oh, I'll be fine. I'm only a few weeks old, after all."

"Rose? Dr. Smith?"

Rose touched the com button on her earpiece. "Yeah. We're inside. There're some markings on the wall. The Doctor thinks they're alien writing. He's working on translating it."

"Thank you, Rose. Anything else?"

"There're some big chains hanging from the top of the silo near where the writing is. He thinks there was an alien chained by its legs—its 'posterior extremities,' if you're gonna put that on the report." Rose shone her torch up while the Doctor scaled a bit of scaffolding. "How's it coming up there?"

"Bit—far," he replied, his voice strained to match the hand he was stretching toward the chain.

Rose smirked. "You're gonna have to stand on your head," she said triumphantly.

"No, no, I can get it!" He reached a little farther. The scaffolding he was clinging to with his other hand creaked. "If I can just swing it away a bit, it'll come back and I can—" He was cut off mid-sentence by a loud creak.

Rose took a few hasty steps backward and tripped over something buried beneath the grain as the scaffolding collapsed.


	3. Chapter 3: Beware

**Chapter**** 3**

**Beware**

Rose coughed. The dust was so thick she could barely see her toes. She tried to form words, but her mouth was dry. She swallowed and licked her lips. "Doctor?" she managed finally. She had to repeat herself twice before she was satisfied.

"Rose? Doctor?"

Rose touched the com button. "Jake, are you getting life signs from the Doctor?"

"Yeah, he's fine. Why?"

"The scaffolding fell."

Rose heard some shuffling from the Tower. "He's green on our end."

"Doctor!" Rose coughed and swiped at the dust.

"'Beware the twenty-fifth,'" came the reply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Doctor, where are—" Rose stopped short. She'd almost stepped on him. He was lying on his back with his chin in the air, looking at the scratches on the wall. She could barely see them through the dust, but he seemed to have no problem. She crouched down next to him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Just having a look at the writing." He pointed up at the wall, and Rose noticed his hand was red.

"Doctor, you're bleeding! Let me see your hand!"

"Bleeding? Am I?" He looked at his hand. "Oh, that stings."

Rose pushed the com button into 'lock' and started digging through her pockets. "Jake, get Dr. Montgomery out here with a chopper. He must have cut his hand on the scaffolding. I can't see how deep it is, and it's really dirty in here."

"She's on her way."

"Already?" Rose asked, pulling a red handkerchief out from her back pocket.

"I sent her out as soon as you said the scaffolding fell."

"Right." Rose took the Doctor's bleeding hand and wrapped the hanky around it. "Hold that there."

"Rose, look at the writing. 'Beware the twenty-fifth.' What's that even mean? What's the date today?"

"It's the twelfth of October."

"No, not just that... there's another mark, but it's just the beginning of a grapheme."

"A what-eem?"

"Grapheme. Barrian script is like Japanese or Korean. They don't have letters; they have symbols that stand for sounds. But this is really weird: the writing's in English."

"What?"

"The graphemes stand for sounds. If you wrote those sounds out in the Roman alphabet—the one you lot use to write English—you'd get English words."

"But we know what kind of aliens there are, right? You said they're Barrians."

"Barrian script is made up of graphemes, so it's used throughout the entire Barrian system, and it's spread to hundreds of colonies. There are a hundred different species in the Barrian system, and even more languages. Not to mention the colonies that use the Barrian script."

"So you have no idea."

"Yup." He sat up. "It's dustier than a library in here." He coughed once and got to his feet. Rose hovered protectively. "It's just a cut, Rose. I'm fine."

"Yeah. Sorry." She led the way out of the silo. "Jake, did you get all that?"

"Yeah, I got it. Barrian script, hundreds of possible species. But, I mean, with all those languages, is it possible that some of them speak English?"

"You lot haven't even gotten to Mars yet."

"Oi! We have so!"

"You have? But you're not supposed to get to Mars until 2150!"

Rose shook her head. "Remember what I told you, Doctor? They don't have the Time Lord Doctor to save them from alien invasion, so they advanced. Technology's years ahead here."

"Even if you _have_ been to Mars, English hasn't spread very far yet. Most races still think you lot go around swinging from trees and yelling at each other. This is something different. They _want_ someone to find this. But why write it in Barrian script?"

"Nobody here knows Barrian script," Jake said. "The aliens who use this writing don't know English, except for these ones. Could it be like a kind of in-house memo?"

The Doctor nodded, grinning. "Oh, that's clever. Use a language none of your people know and a writing system none of the natives know. Only they weren't expecting _me_." He laughed. "Oh, this is good."

"Doctor," Jake interrupted, "they don't know you. Your people don't exist here."

"Perfect," the Doctor replied, grinning. "This universe doesn't remember the Time Lords, which gives _us_ the upper hand."

Rose was about to comment when the chopper appeared over the rise of the hill off to the east, its blades whirring noisily. She stood up, produced an orange handkerchief, and waved it in the air. The chopper landed in the field next to the silo and Dr. Montgomery jogged over to Rose and the Doctor, medical bag in hand.

"Hello, Natalia. Nice to see you." The Doctor held out his hanky-wrapped hand.

Rose blinked. "You and Dr. Montgomery are on a first-name basis?"

Dr. Montgomery pulled a box of antibacterial wipes from her bag. "I don't know what they do in the Alpha Division, but I've started to get concerned if I don't get called at least three or four times a day."

Rose looked at the Doctor. "How often is it this one here?"

The Doctor looked sheepish. "Once a day, usually," Dr. Montgomery replied for him. "Good news and bad news," she told him, digging in her bag again.

"Bad news first," he said immediately.

She smeared some goo on his cut. "You'll have to take a few days off."

"What's the good news?"

"You don't have to take more than a week off."

"But my team needs me!"

She put the goo away and started wrapping his hand with gauze. "You're lucky I'm not giving you stitches, Dr. Smith. I don't want you opening up this cut again, d'you hear me?"

"What am I supposed to do if I can't go to work?" he whined.

Rose cleared her throat.

Dr. Montgomery didn't look up. "If you're careful with your hand, I'll let you finish this mission. But no climbing around on things, and absolutely _no_ going down to the Alpha Division until your hand's healed up."

The Doctor stopped complaining so much then, and Dr. Montgomery gave him instructions to change the wrappings once a day, keep it dry, and avoid using it for a few days. The Doctor insisted on riding back with Rose and Rose insisted he take the chopper.

"Both of you get in the chopper, and _I_ will drive the jeep back," Dr. Montgomery said finally. "Honestly, you two fight like an old married couple." She picked up her bag and walked off to the jeep.

Rose refused to speak for the entire ride back to Torchwood.


	4. Chapter 4: Reports

**Chapter**** 4**

**Reports**

"Rose, are you angry with me?" the Doctor asked as he sat in the extra chair in her office while she wrote up her report. "You haven't said a word to me since we left Bristol."

Rose didn't respond. She kept typing.

"You know, it'd help if you _told_ me why you're cross. I'm not psychic."

She shot a glare at him. "I asked you _five __times_ who River Song was, and you never answered me!"

"Is that what this is about? Oh, Rose..." He sighed. "I told you, she's not important."

"Then why can't you just tell me?"

"You want to know who she is?"

"Yes!"

He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the desk. "We met in the library, and she knew me. Well, she knew _him_. I was a hand in a jar, then, so it wasn't me, but it feels like it was, because I have all his memories, and—"

"I get it! Get to the point."

"Okay, sorry! They met in the library, and she knew him, but he'd never met her before."

"So she's a time traveller?"

"Yes. But she's more than just a time traveller. She knew his name."

Rose froze. "How? How could she know his name?"

The Doctor took a deep breath, like he was about to dive off a cliff. "There's only one reason anyone would know his name. My name. _Our_ name. Only one way he or I could tell it to someone."

"And that would be?"

"A wedding. A true, traditional, Time Lord hand-fasting."

"River Song is his _wife_?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"But you're not him."

"No. I'm not him."

Rose let out a breath she'd been holding for a while. "And what about you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Nobody in this universe knows my name. I'm dead in the other universe, strictly speaking."

"D'you have to follow the same rule?"

"Yes. It's still the name of the last of the Time Lords, and the walls of this universe aren't very good at keeping things in the Void out."

Rose nodded.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I didn't know how you'd react."

She rubbed her temples. "It's hard to wrap my head around this whole thing. Sometimes I just want to pretend it never happened, forget it all and start over."

"That's not true," he said, taking her hand. "You'd have to forget all the things you saw: New Earth, the Sycorax, that planet around the black hole—"

"Stop. Just..." Rose took a deep breath and let it out. "What are we going to do?"

"We?"

"I'm not thick, Doctor, and I'm not going to pretend I could spend the rest of my life with anyone else. But I'm not... I'm not ready for..."

He squeezed her hand and let go. "How about we just start by finishing this case?"

"Right." Rose turned back to the computer. "What did you say the writing said?"

"'Beware the twenty-fifth.'"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"No idea."

Rose shook her head and typed it onto her report. After a few minutes of near silence, the door to Rose's office burst open.

"Rose!" Ivan Daniels, one of the controllers from the Tower, looked like he'd run a record mile. His face was flushed and his shirt wasn't doing well at hiding the sweat.

"Ivan? Is something wrong?"

He spoke rapidly, trying to get the words out between breaths. "I just came from across town. There's a company day care that's got twenty-four kids gone missing in the last month."

"Why didn't anyone report anything?"

"That's just it... nobody remembers the children. Not their parents, not the day care workers, nobody." He leaned against the door frame. "The tipper wouldn't give his name, either. Just said he'd gone in for a business meeting there, saw someone bring her three kids in, and then when he was leaving, she left too, only one kid didn't come along. When he asked about it, she told him he must have miscounted, because she only ever had two kids."

"Is there a pattern?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, all of them have at least one sibling, and none of the twenty-four are related. The selections seem to be random otherwise." He shook his head. "Thing is, nobody knows where they've gone."

"Or where they've been taken," Rose added, standing up and strapping on her stunner. "Come on, Doctor. We've got a job to do." She stopped briefly at the door. "Ivan, get me as much information on those kids and that building as you can. Medical records, floor plans, anything."

"You can't go now!" Ivan called after them. "They're not closed for two hours yet, and the building won't be empty for three at least."

"We're Torchwood!" the Doctor protested.

Rose shook her head. "No, Ivan's right. We're Torchwood, and a lot of companies aren't very fond of Torchwood agents showing up during the day. It'd set their people off, and then nobody'd show up for work. It's happened before. We'll have to wait."

"Rubbish! Haven't you got a change of clothes?"

"Always have."

"Then we'll go as civilians."


	5. Chapter 5: Morton & Sons

**Chapter** **5**

**Morton**** & ****Sons**

Fifteen minutes later, Rose and the Doctor were in a cab, headed for the headquarters of a small corporation called Morton & Sons. Morton & Sons was an advertisement firm that seemed to have a special affinity for children's products: toys, nappies, bottles, cots, buggies. Jake had made up some rubbish story for them on the spot, that Rose Tyler, heiress of Vitex, was looking at designing a line of toddler fashion on Tony's behalf. The Doctor was still dressed in his Torchwood uniform, posing as her bodyguard.

"How're we going to have a proper lookabout if I'm supposed to be posing as the great and famous Rose Tyler?"

"Should make it easier, you being the 'great and famous' Rose Tyler. Nobody says no to you."

"Right. Sure." Rose sighed and looked out the window as the car pulled to a halt.

"Morton & Sons," the driver announced.

"Thanks," Rose said as she climbed out of the cab. The building was fairly tall—twenty or so floors—and round. The lobby was fairly ordinary, and the secretary at the front door waved them through the moment she recognised Rose Tyler. Amid the ensuing fuss, Rose saw the layout of the building, something Ivan hadn't had time to dig up for her.

In the centre of the building was a circular lift. Around the lift was an open space, and around the open space was the rest of the building. The whole building was a series of concentric circles and walls that crossed those circles. A single wall spanned the space on one side of the lift, all the way to the outer building; it was the only way out of the lift above the ground floor. At the top of the tower, the roof was set with twelve skylights.

"Nice building," she commented. "Love the skylights. Shall we take the lift?"

The Doctor nodded, but said nothing, and Rose remembered that he was supposed to be her bodyguard. "All the way to the top," she said, pressing the button labelled "23." The doors closed, then opened again a few seconds later.

The Doctor pointed to the lights above the lift door. "Do you notice anything odd?"

Rose frowned at the lights. "They look normal to me. They're all in order, except they're backward, and we're—oh. But why are the floors numbered backward?"

"I dunno. Fancy building, though. Never seen anything like it—at least, not on Earth, and certainly not in your era." He punched the button marked "0." "Let's see what's up top, shall we?"

"Aren't we supposed to be looking for the day care? You know, _missing_ _children_ and all that."

"Yeah, but we can't really investigate till everyone goes home, so we may as well have a look round." The lift doors closed and the lift climbed higher and higher. Rose stopped herself from looking down through the glass floor of the lift; she was curious, but she knew it would only make her sick. At the top, the lift opened the doors that faced the wall, revealing a sort of gangway leading to the offices. She stepped out of the doors and the walls lit up, leading her along to the outer walkway. The Doctor followed close behind her.

There were eleven offices on the top floor, with a small desk and a secretary outside each one. "Must be the executive level," the Doctor muttered. "But if there's a lift, there must be stairs around here somewhere." He approached one of the secretaries. "Excuse me, where are the stairs?"

The secretary looked up from her typing. "On the other end of the circle, sir."

"Thanks. Miss Tyler, this way." Rose followed him around to the other side of the circle, reading the numbers over the doors.

"Whoever built this place must have been really odd," Rose said when they were in the stairwell.

"Why do you say that?" the Doctor asked, leading her down the stairs.

"The offices aren't numbered properly. Every office is numbered five away from the next one."

"Who says that's not proper?"

"It's just odd, that's all. Things here aren't _that_ different. Why are we on the stairs, anyway?"

"Looking for somewhere to wait."

"Why don't we just find an empty office? I doubt anyone would notice." Rose opened the door to level two. All the offices were occupied. "Not here."

The Doctor looked out the door and scanned the floor. He looked up, then down, then shut the door and continued down the stairs to the next floor. They repeated the process at every floor, but all of the offices on every floor were occupied. Fifteen floors later, Rose opened the door onto level seventeen and stopped short.

The Doctor poked his head out. "It's deserted. But where did everyone go?" He walked out and around, opening office doors and confirming them empty. He and Rose went around the entire circle and reached the door to the stairs when all eleven secretaries reappeared. Rose and the Doctor slipped back into the stairwell before anyone noticed them.

"No fading, no beams, no nothing. Just gone one moment and back the next. How'd they manage that?" Rose asked.

"No idea, but I bet it's alien." He started down the stairs again. They arrived just in time to see eleven secretaries disappear with as little ceremony as the other ones had reappeared. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the room. "Fantastic!"

"What?"

"They've all been translocated. But why? Why move all the people off this floor?" He continued scanning, walking toward the inner edge of the circle, Rose following. When they reached the fence, the door behind them burst open, then slammed shut. Rose and the Doctor turned.

Standing in front of the closed door was a girl a few years younger than Rose, her bright blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore dress slacks and a green top, and looked for all the world like one of the secretaries, except that she held a small gun in her left hand. She looked at Rose, terrified, then at the Doctor. Her face lit up and a grin stretched across her face.

Rose looked at the Doctor. He just stared wide-eyed at the girl. "What."

"Hello, Dad."


	6. Chapter 6: Jenny

**A/N: Updates will probably start coming out a bit less frequently. Lots to do, not much time. But I'll post chapters as I finish them. Also, thank you all for the reviews.**

**Cookies, brownies, and love to my beta-bestie EnoughToTemptMe.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter<strong>** 6**

**Jenny**

"Hello, Dad."

Rose looked at the Doctor, then at the girl. "Who—"

"Jenny?"

The girl nodded furiously, still grinning. "I can't believe I found you!"

"But you were dead! You were—you _died_."

"Doctor—"

Jenny nodded. "Yeah, and then I came back."

"But how?"

"The Source must have brought me back."

"Doctor—"

"But how did you get _here_?"

"I left in the shuttle. I've been all over. Oh, you were right! It's so amazing out there!"

"No, but how did you get _here_?"

"What do you mean? I flew here in my ship. How else would I get here?"

"Jenny, you're in a different _universe_."

"_DOCTOR__!_" Rose yelled.

The Doctor looked at Rose, then at Jenny, then at Rose again. "Sorry. This is Jenny. She's… well, she's _his_ daughter."

"His _daughter_? But he never said…"

"Well, she's… it's a long story."

Rose crossed her arms. "Then you better tell it fast."

He sighed. "He was travelling with Martha and Donna. They ended up on Messaline, a newly colonised world, the colonists forced his hand into a machine that recombined his DNA and made _her_, and then she was shot in the chest and somehow the terraforming brought her back and now she's here."

Jenny frowned. "What d'you mean, _he_? You talk like you're not my dad."

"I'm not. Well, I am, but I'm not. Anyway, the man who _is_ your father got his hand cut off in a sword fight. He grew a new hand, then eventually found his old one and put it in a jar, and then… short version: stuff happened and then I came out of his old hand, except I only have one heart, which makes me human and not Time Lord and not your father. I'm sorry."

Jenny shook her head. "But you look just like him!"

"I'd love to figure it out, but right now, eleven secretaries just disappeared and I need to find out where they've gone." He turned and started scanning the whole level again with his screwdriver.

"We won't find them unless we get taken with the next shift," Jenny said.

"The next shift?" Rose asked.

"Every hour on the hour, one floor disappears, and they come back at five-till."

The Doctor nodded, then continued: "And then the next floor goes five minutes later. But where are they going?" He searched behind one of the desks, looking for some kind of alien technology.

"Well, wouldn't the best way be to walk in just before the secretaries disappear?" Jenny asked.

"We were here when the last ones disappeared," Rose replied, shaking her head. "If we were going to be taken with them, we would have been taken before."

The Doctor stood up from behind one of the desks, grinning, held up a small metal cylinder, and then disappeared.

"Where'd he go?" Jenny asked.

Rose rolled her eyes. "He's showing off. He'll be back in a minute."

Sixty seconds after he disappeared, the Doctor reappeared, still grinning and still holding up the cylinder. "That's what I thought," he said, putting the cylinder back under the desk.

"What was that thing?"

"Manipulator valve." An alarm sounded somewhere in one of the offices. "Oh, and that's our cue to leave. Rose, Jenny, come on." He made for the stairs. "Up," he commanded.

"But we won't be able to get out!"

"Just trust me!"

Jenny started up the stairs. Rose eyed the Doctor for a hard moment, then followed her. He took up the rear, urging them up three floors. They collected themselves, then, and walked out to the lift. None of the secretaries looked up or acknowledged their presence. The three of them got in the lift and it took them all the way to the ground floor.

"Miss Tyler, with me," said the Doctor. He looked at Jenny. "You too, miss." He escorted both of them out of the building and onto the street just as the company's security officers arrived back on the first floor. "Rose, where's the Torchwood car?"

"He should be—oh, here he comes."

"Good. Don't let him go straight to Torchwood. If someone follows him, things might turn out badly."

"What about me?" Jenny asked. "Can I come with you?"

An hour later, Rose strode into Pete Tyler's office with Jenny and the Doctor in tow.

"Rose!" Pete smiled and got out of his chair to give his daughter a hug. "Who's your friend?"

"Her name's Jenny. She's from my old world, too. Well, sort of. She's from a place called Messaline."

Pete nodded expectantly.

"I'm not exactly sure—he went over it kind of fast—but I _think_ she's his daughter."

"She's not _my_ daughter," he protested. "She's _his_ daughter."

"But you're him."

"I'm only partly him. We've been over this. I'm part him, part Donna. Jenny is _all_ him. Literally. She actually has no mother."

"How can she not have a mother?" Pete asked.

Before anyone else could speak, the Doctor explained, "Some colonists on Messaline forced his hand into a progenitor machine that recombined his DNA to make _her_." He pointed to Jenny.

"Well, she'll have to go through the system," Pete said.

"She's just visiting," Rose countered. "Helping us out with this investigation down at Morton & Sons."

Pete looked between Jenny and Rose. "I'll leave this one up to you, Rose." He looked like he didn't particularly like it. "Just don't let it get out of hand."

"Of course." Rose smiled at Jenny. "No making a big fuss of yourself, yeah?"

Jenny laughed. "That's the last thing I want to do!"

Pete excused himself, saying he really ought to get home, and Rose invited Jenny to stay at her flat. "We'll see you tomorrow morning, Doctor. Reports to write, and we'll have to make a plan for a proper investigation of that building."

"Of course." He looked... disappointed?

She sighed inwardly and asked, "I was going to stop by the chip shop on the way home. You want to come?"

He seemed to brighten up a bit.

"Chips? You mean real chips from Earth? Never had real Earth chips before!" Jenny was ecstatic about the chip shop excursion. By the time they got their orders of fish and chips, Jenny could hardly contain herself.

"She's like a little kid, isn't she?" Rose said to the Doctor.

He gave her a vague sort of shrug. "How _did_ you get here, Jenny?"

"Well, I flew here in the shuttle. I told you."

"Nothing out of the ordinary?"

"I got sucked through a wormhole. At least, I think it was a wormhole. One minute, I'm flying along nice as you please, and the next minute, my instruments are going haywire and before I can make sense of any of it, I'm flying along again, but my coordinates are all totally different. I landed here because Earth was the nearest place to land. I checked the instruments when I landed; they're all perfectly fine."

"A wormhole?" he asked. "Did you see anything?"

"No. I had my shields up because I'd just gone through a radiation belt. I only saw what was on my monitors. Do you know what it was?"

"A gap. You fell through a gap of reality, right as it was closing. Normally you have to go through intentionally and it's very smooth, but if you fell through and it jolted you around a bit, then it was on its way shut."

"So I'm... I'm stuck here?"

"Yes," he replied, nodding. Your ship still works, so you'll be able to travel around this universe."

"I didn't even see all of the first one." She sighed. "So, do you do a lot of running here?"

"It's been a bit quiet since I came here a couple of weeks ago," the Doctor said.

"You've stayed here all this time?" Jenny asked. "What about your ship? The blue one?"

Rose knew it was still a sore subject for him, losing the TARDIS. He looked lost as he told Jenny how the Time Lord Doctor still had the TARDIS, and he was earthbound. Rose wondered if he was getting restless already, if he might not want to stay after all. The thought had been present in the back of her mind for some time now, but now it plagued her, occupying her thoughts so much that she didn't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning.


	7. Chapter 7: Perception

**A/N: Okay, I know it's been a while (relatively) since my last chapter, but life is being a butterface and getting in my way. So enjoy and hopefully I'll get the next chapter posted before Monday (no guarantees!).**

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><p><strong>Chapter<strong>** 7**

**Perception**

Rose had to drag herself out of bed the next morning, only to find tea and breakfast already made. "I hope you don't mind," Jenny said when Rose stumbled into the kitchen. "I just kind of went through the cupboards and the icebox and made some breakfast. I don't have to eat very often, but I get so hungry sometimes!"

Rose poured herself a cup of tea, nodding. "You really are part Time Lord. I swear the Doctor could have..." She trailed off, remembering that the Doctor—the Time Lord one—was dead now. "Have you seen him lately, the Doctor?"

"Er... you mean, since yesterday?"

"No, not him. I mean, the Time Lord one. The one with the..." Rose made a gesture to indicate two hearts.

"Oh... no, I haven't seen him since Messaline. Have you seen him?"

Rose focused on her tea, avoiding Jenny's gaze. "Yeah. Just the once," she lied, accepting a plate of breakfast from Jenny. She barely noticed her food, and when it was mostly gone, she showered quickly, dressed, and ushered Jenny out the door.

Torchwood was just as busy as ever. Rose still had to finish her report on the grain silo, and write up a shortened report for the recon mission at Morton & Sons (to be expanded into a full report when they finished the investigation). She also had to keep an eye on Jenny, for fear the new girl would go wandering off and end up getting herself into trouble. If she was _anything_ like the Doctor—and she would be, if the story about her being his daughter was true—trouble would find her the moment she left Rose's watch.

The Doctor himself came to Rose's office an hour after she and Jenny arrived. He did not look pleased at having to sit around while his hand healed. He took out his sonic screwdriver and scanned Jenny's torso with it.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"You were shot in the chest." He looked straight at her. "How did you survive?"

Jenny shrugged. "The Source brought me back."

"Yes, but _how_?"

Jenny laughed. "I don't know! It revived a whole planet. Surely it could bring back _one_ girl."

The Doctor frowned thoughtfully. "The gases in the terraforming were made to renew soil and plant life, but sentient life forms—it's not that powerful." Realisation skitters across his face. "But you're Time Lord. You don't need a ball of gas to heal you; you can do it yourself."

Jenny and Rose exchanged glances. "I don't understand," Jenny says. "I thought the Source brought me back."

The Doctor shakes his head. "No. You went into a healing coma."

"A healing coma?"

"Time Lords have loads of tricks for cheating death. Certain fatal injuries—like getting shot in the chest—can be healed without regeneration, but it requires devoting all your resources to it. In a healing coma, there aren't any vital life signs, so you appear to be dead." He shakes his head. "I should have known. I hadn't seen anyone in a healing coma in so long, though... out of sight, out of mind, as they say."

"So it wasn't the Source?"

"No."

"I did it myself? So I could do it again if I had to?"

"Sure. But you better hope you don't have to." The Doctor taps his chin with his screwdriver, studying Jenny. "So why are you here? Why did you get sucked through a gap in reality?"

"I don't know. But I'm here." Jenny didn't seem to care one way or another how she survived dying or how she came to be on Pete's Earth. "I wonder if Messaline's in this universe too."

"Not yet," the Doctor replied automatically. "At least, not as you know it. You fell through a hole in reality, which means you fell through space _and_ time. We're hundreds of thousands of years before human colonists make it anywhere _near_ Messaline."

Jenny frowned. "Can I get back to my world?"

"No," chorused the Doctor and Rose.

"Sorry," Rose said quickly.

"The gaps between realities are closed now, and to open them up again would mean destruction of a whole lot, if not all, of reality."

"And besides, we've got a mission to complete here," Rose said. "We need to figure out when we can go for a better recon."

"It'll have to be at night," Jenny said. "The ground floor is only empty from eleven until five to midnight."

"Don't the secretaries go home?"

Jenny shook her head. "No, they don't. I don't know what Morton does to them when they're away for their hour, but it keeps them in their seats for the other twenty-three."

"That's not human," Rose said immediately. "The secretaries can't be human. They're too... _perfect_."

"They might be androids," the Doctor suggested. "So it'll have to be eleven o'clock, and we'll have about fifty safe minutes. Also, we have to make sure we're not on the floor when the secretaries go, or we'll get taken with them." The Doctor pulled a small metal cylinder out of his pocket. "There's one of these under every desk. Together, they form a network of vortex manipulators. The secretaries don't go anywhere; they get shifted in time. Forward, fifty-five minutes."

"Morton's doing?" asked Rose.

"Definitely," Jenny answered.

"The tower's built too perfectly for anyone but the owner of the company to be the mastermind. We just have to find out what he's up to, find him, and put a stop to it."

Jenny squirmed a bit with excitement. "That's the best part, isn't it?"

The Doctor looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. "I like the running."

"I like the part in the middle," Rose added, "when everything's right and proper."

"You mean, before you find out there are aliens involved."

"There are _always_ aliens involved with you," Rose said.

"Not me," the Doctor countered.

Silence fell, and Jenny looked back and forth between them.

* * *

><p>Rose and Jenny followed the Doctor into the building at precisely 11:02. The floor was, as predicted, deserted. The plan was to search the floor, with emphasis on the day care, but when they walked in, there was no need to search. The door to the day care was closed, but light shone out from the space between the door and the jamb. They approached the door, and the light went out.<p>

"They left?"

"Or they detected us. No alarms yet," Jenny said. "And they might come back, if they didn't detect us."

"Right." Rose gestured to the door. "Care to, Doctor?"

The Doctor sonicced the door and eased it open, looking and scanning. He slipped inside, gesturing for Rose and Jenny to follow. The day care looked normal enough, and after half an hour of searching, they found nothing. "Doctor, I don't think there's anything here," Rose said.

"There," he replied, pointing in the direction of the toilet. "Look at it."

Rose looked, and there were two doors. "But there was only one door five minutes ago!" Jenny exclaimed.

"Perception filter," the Doctor explained. "Keeps you from seeing it if you're not actually looking for it. Even then, it's a bit difficult to find. You have to look right where you don't want to look; that's the key to a perception filter."

"How long have you known it was there?" Rose asked.

"A while. I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything else."

"But the hour's nearly up!"

"Yep. We'll have to come back tomorrow."

Rose touched the door. "It's real. Has it always been there?"

"Oh yes. It's just always had the perception filter on it. The day care workers probably don't know it's there."

"Ivan said the workers didn't remember the missing children, and neither did their parents."

"Oh, that's not hard. It's just a second kind of perception filter, only it filters out certain memories. But feeding that many perception filters would take a _lot_ of energy, and an enormous generator. Add to that the energy required for over fourteen thousand minute shifts per day, and someone is using an energy source that isn't found on Earth."

"Minute shifts?" Rose asked. "You mean the secretaries?"

"Eleven secretaries per floor times twenty-four floors times fifty-five minutes is fourteen thousand five hundred twenty minute shifts. And even one minute shift requires at _least_ five minutes of charge from a standard nuclear reactor."

"But there aren't seventy thousand minutes in a day!" Jenny protested.

"So they've got to be using something more powerful than a nuclear reactor," Rose answered. "I think we should get out of here. It's ten to midnight."

The Doctor shut and locked the doors behind them on the way out. He rode back in the jeep to Torchwood with them, and then took a cab with them back to Rose's building. He seemed hesitant to leave, so Rose handed Jenny the key. "You go on up. I'll be up in a mo'."

Jenny disappeared up the stairs.

Rose turned to the Doctor. "So... how's your hand?" she asked.

"Better." He held it out for her to see. It was still wrapped up, but not nearly as much as it had been two days before.

"Have you been following Dr. Montgomery's instructions?"

"To the letter."

"And the case? How much have you figured out?"

He shrugged. "I'm still working on it."

There was more silence. After a while, he said, "Will you come for dinner with me sometime?"

Rose smiled. "Of course I will. What kind of a question's that?"

He shook his head. "No, I mean _dinner_. You do that, don't you? Dress up and go someplace and have fancy wine and little tiny portions of really good food?"

"You mean like a date?" Rose asked.

"Is that what you call it?"

"I think I'd like that. When this case is closed, yeah? We still got missing children to find."

He nodded genially. "As you wish."

"Thanks for your help tonight. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Of course." He smiled.

Rose reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Goodnight, my Doctor," she said before turning and taking the stairs two at a time up to her flat. It took her almost three hours to fall asleep.

* * *

><p>The Doctor, who normally only needed four or five hours of sleep, being part Time Lord, didn't sleep at all.<p> 


	8. Chapter 8: Aliens

**A/N: Sorry about this absurd lateness (okay, relative lateness). In my defence, writer's block and life. But many, MANY cookies and hugs to EnoughToTemptMe for all her beta help.**

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><p><strong>Chapter<strong>** 8**

**Aliens**

Rose slept in late the following morning. Jenny was reading through Rose's meager supply of books when Rose staggered into the kitchen in search of something to eat.

"Morning," Jenny said, glancing up briefly. "Sleep well?"

Rose gave a noncommittal sort of grunt and went to put the kettle on, massaging her neck while she waited for the water to boil. By the time she poured her tea, Jenny had finished the entire stack of books in the sitting room. "Is this all you do?" Jenny asked. "Just read books and watch telly and sleep and eat and go to work?"

Rose nodded slowly. "Pretty much. Sometimes I chase aliens. Most people don't."

"Every day?"

"Every single one of them."

Jenny couldn't seem to wrap her head around it. "I'd go mad!"

"Sometimes I think I have." Rose chuckled, shaking her head. "Used to be every day we'd step out of the TARDIS and go chasing down some alien or other. Now..." She stared into her tea, her mood darkening. "Now I have to wait. Sometimes it's weeks between cases."

"I'm sorry," Jenny said solemnly. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's fine," Rose interrupted. "Don't be sorry. It was wonderful then, and it's not totally gone."

"You never know. Maybe someone will come along with a space ship and you'll be able to run around the universe again." Jenny smiled. "I know it wouldn't be the same; I don't think I know of any ships that travel in time."

Rose just gave a halfhearted shrug, as if she couldn't care either way. She only hoped Jenny didn't give the Doctor the same offer because, frankly, she wasn't sure he wouldn't take it, and she wasn't sure she could go back to that now. "I'm going to go in to the office a bit later. Are you coming?"

"Have I got a choice?"

"Well, I don't know if you want to sit in my office for hours, since we're not going back to Morton's till tonight."

"Maybe I'll go see what the Doctor's up to." Jenny shrugged. "Or I'll find the library. I quite like reading. I've found so many wonderful things in books."

Rose nodded. "I've got to have a shower and dress and then I thought you and I'd go to lunch. Girl time, you know."

Jenny giggled. "No, I don't know, but it sounds like fun."

Rose assured her it would be and went to shower. She found herself taking a much longer shower than she had expected, just standing under the hot water. Something about hot showers just helped her think so much better. As she dried herself with a fluffy pink towel, she thought about how the Doctor probably had an extra-scientific explanation for it. She could picture him explaining it to her as he tinkered with some gadget or other, and she laughed to herself. He was half-human, but he really hadn't changed all that much.

She and Jenny stopped by a hot dog stand and sat on a nearby park bench to eat. Jenny, who had never had a hot dog, marveled at it with her usual awe and wonderment.

"So, what do you do when you're not eating Earth chips and hot dogs?" Rose asked.

"I travel round in my shuttle. Go from system to system, planet to planet. Sometimes there's a problem and I help. I'm really good at fixing almost anything. It's like I can look at something and figure a way to fix it in almost no time at all."

"You really are his daughter," Rose commented. "He does it all the time."

"But I've never had a companion before, not like he's got."

"He didn't at first, either. When I met him, he was all alone."

"I wish I'd gotten to know him better. I tried to find him, but..."

"You didn't have a time machine. Just a space ship."

Jenny nodded. "Bit harder to find someone if you move in three dimensions and they move in four."

"You'll get to know him now," Rose said. "You're not in a hurry to go anywhere, are you?"

"I'm never in a hurry to get anywhere. But this man who looks like my dad isn't my dad."

"He is, and he isn't. He has all the Doctor's memories and all his brain power, but he has... I don't know. He's so _human_ now. He has a job and a flat and he goes to the chippy for lunch and he seems to enjoy it here but I know he misses the travelling and the running." Rose watched the people going by, wondering what she'd do if he left now.

"How is it even possible? Did I really come to a whole new universe?"

"Yeah." Rose explained from the Cybermen (which she skimmed over very briefly) up to the day Donna and the Doctor left them on the beach at Darlig ulv Stranden. Jenny listened attentively through the whole story, never interrupting.

When Rose finished, Jenny asked, "If he'd given you the option to go back with him, what would you have done?"

Rose blinked. "I would have—" She thought about Tony and her mum and how the human Doctor had said those words the Time Lord never did. "I don't know."

"But you like it here?"

Rose shrugged. "It's nice, but it's not the same."

After a short silence, Jenny asked, "So you fight aliens?"

Rose shook her head. "Not usually. Loads of them are tourists, coming to see the wonders of our primitive world. Only a few are hostile, and then we have to find ways to get them to leave. I was just glad to find that a version of the Shadow Proclamation exists here. Earth is still a level five planet, too; found that out when some Hoxillians were scared off by the mention of it."

"But you've never gotten in touch with this universe's actual Shadow Proclamation?"

"No. But we've tried. We _are_ trying. I want to find a copy of their articles, you know, so I don't look like a fool. But all I know for sure is Earth's a level five planet according to Article Fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation." Rose felt like she was reciting something she learned in school.

"If you've got a data storage bank of some sort, the Articles of the Proclamation are all stored on the shuttle's data banks. It's probably not the same as the Proclamation here, but it's a start."

Rose smiled. "Thanks. Maybe after this case is closed. I'm worried about those missing kids. It's taken us two days already, and I don't know how long ago they went missing."

"We'll find them. We've got the Doctor." Jenny smiled encouragingly.

* * *

><p>Rose looked at her watch again. Five to eleven. In five minutes, she'd start the jeep, drive around the block, and lead Jenny and the Doctor back into Morton &amp; Sons. In ten minutes, they would be inside the building, headed for whatever was behind that strange door.<p>

They'd spent the evening in Rose's office with takeaway Indian food. The Doctor had explained his theory, or as much of a theory as he had so far. "If you were going to hide a door, you'd hide it somewhere nobody would accidentally run into it—a back hallway, an unused closet. But if you hide it in the middle of a day care centre, you put it there because you need either children or toys. Or possibly nursery workers. Twenty-four children went missing from the day care, twenty-four children that have been filtered out of the memories of everyone who ever knew them."

"Are they still alive?" Jenny had asked him. She'd been as concerned as Rose about those kids.

He'd tried to reassure them, saying that they were probably still alive because children are always more useful alive. He couldn't answer Rose for certain when she'd asked if the kids might have been taken to another planet.

"Rose," he said, bringing her back to the present. "It's time to go."

She drove to where they'd planned to park, shut off the jeep, and strapped on her stunner. She went ahead of them and looked through a window to make sure the floor was clear. She nodded to the Doctor, who opened the back door with the screwdriver. No alarms sounded as they walked through the building, and the light from behind the day care door vanished when they approached.

"The door's gone," Rose said. She blinked, and it reappeared. "No, wait. Now it's back. Is that the perception filter?"

"Yes. It makes you want to look anywhere but the door. Let's see what's on the other side." He opened the door onto a set of stairs and started down them without even hesistating. Jenny followed, and Rose came down last, leaving the door slightly ajar.

"Beware the twenty-fifth," Rose said. "That'll go down to the twenty-fifth floor, won't it?"

"Technically, it's the twenty-fourth floor," he replied without looking back. "Besides, I don't think that message was meant for us." He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, listening at the door.

"Do you hear that?" Jenny asked.

"It's ticking," Rose said, listening closely. "Sounds like a clock."

The Doctor opened the door slowly, looked through, and then beckoned for Jenny and Rose to follow. The room was a nursery three times the size of the one at the top of the stairs, lit by fairy lights and littered with toys. Other than the toys, however, the room was empty.

"The ray is primed, Father," came a young man's voice from somewhere, everywhere in the room.

"Give me the pretty one," answered another voice.

The Doctor moved to protect Rose; Rose moved to protect Jenny. A beam of light shot out of some unseen device in the ceiling, sizzled past Rose's ear, and hit Jenny squarely in the chest as she vanished.

Rose and the Doctor chorused a protest as the lights went out.


	9. Chapter 9: Gears

**A/N: This is the last chapter of this story, but I plan on continuing the storyline (don't worry, they're not done yet) in a later instalment. Be on the lookout!**

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><p><strong>Chapter<strong>** 9**

**Gears**

"What did you do to her?" Rose demanded of the darkness.

The answering voice seemed to come from the walls themselves. "I've been watching you scamper around my tower. You silly humans are so childish! You think that just because you don't see us, we can't see you. I chose your pretty little friend when she came in. So much energy, even as an adult." A door opened across the room. "Come and see my engine."

The "engine" was a room occupied by a huge metal gear. It hung horizontally from the ceiling and turned ever so slowly, ticking loudly as it went. In each of its teeth was a small cot.

A small man with a pale, bluish complexion appeared. "Human children," he explained. "They're so full of _life_! So much excess energy!"

"What are you doing to them?" demanded the Doctor. Rose could see the Oncoming Storm in his eyes, his face, his stance.

"I am simply taking care of them. I give them nice food, fun toys, and then I harvest their energy: their play, their laughter, their dreaming. My machine will use it to convert the entire human population."

"You're going to convert the human race into children? What for?"

"Surely you must know how impressionable children are. I will convert all the world to children and train them in a higher way, a way to conquer the stars."

"You're going to brainwash an army of six billion children," Rose summarised, horrified.

"Oh, she's good. Maybe I'll keep her on as a nanny, shall I?" He fixed his sadistic smile on the Doctor, whose eyes darkened. Rose could practically hear him thinking. "Yes, I am. And it begins with these, my shining Vanguard: twenty-five model humans for the others to follow."

"Where are they?"

"It's the middle of the night. They are where all good children should be: in bed. Dreaming isn't as efficient a form of energy as play or laughter, but it suffices." Something beeped angrily: the unmistakable sound of an alarm.

"Something wrong?" asked the Doctor. Rose stayed close to him as he talked, knowing he had control of the situation now. "Because I think your machine might be overloading."

"That's impossible!" he cried. "It is calibrated perfectly! Junior! Junior?"

"Oh, I think he must have gotten snatched away, just like your secretaries. Snatched away into the future."

"Human children cannot overload my system!"

"No, not human children." The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back. "'Morton and Sons.' Tell me, Morton, what happened to your other son?"

Morton looked at the Doctor and his eyes widened.

"You locked him up, didn't you? You thought he was mad, so you locked him in a grain silo in the middle of a field way out in the country where nobody would ever find him."

"How do you know this?"

"I found his message inside the silo where you left him. A message in English, written in Barrian script." The beeping grew more insistent and the tempo of the ticking increased. While Morton frantically tried to fix things, the Doctor turned to Rose. "Rose, get the children out of here." He turned back to Morton as Rose ducked out of sight and started taking children into the other room. "You should have listened to your son, Morton. 'Beware the twenty-fifth,' he said. I know you lot haven't had much interaction with Time Lords, so I'll give you the answers and not the quiz. You see, very young Time Lords don't dream like human children; they dream of the Time Vortex. Normally, it's not harmful—it just stays in their little Time Lord minds—but you're harvesting her dreams. Your machine is feeding on the Time Vortex, and it's going into overload. It's going to go critical in a few minutes, and everything in this room will be sucked out of existence and transported, oh, a few billion years into the future, or maybe the past." He levelled his sonic screwdriver at the nearby fuse box. It opened and he started tinkering around inside. Things snapped and clicked, and a minute later, the cots levitated out of the gear and onto the floor.

"Doctor, I'm not going to be able to wake them up in time," Rose said. "It's going to take me twenty minutes to get them all out of here."

"We've got two." He sonicced the box again, and the cots hovered an inch off the ground. "The excess energy is keeping the cots up. Just get the cots through the door." He pushed the cots toward her, all except one. "Go, Rose!"

The second Rose was out the door, the Doctor slammed it shut and picked up the child in the cot at his feet. Morton took notice then. "Yes! Take her out! Wake her! My machine will not explode and we will all live!"

"I told you to stop, Morton, but you didn't listen. Next time, remember this: the little girl who dreams of the Time Vortex will find you. Nowhere in space or time is safe." He pointed the screwdriver at the fuse box, pressed a button, and ducked through the door, carrying the still-sleeping toddler.

* * *

><p>Rose was frantically trying to get someone, anyone, to come out to Morton &amp; Sons to help sort the mess, but it was the middle of the night, and only Jake and Ivan were still in the Tower.<p>

"Jake and Ivan can't leave the Tower while we're still on the field. They've been calling round but nobody's picking up."

He pushed the com button on his earpiece. "Jake?"

"Yeah, Doc?"

"Will you call the parents of the twenty-four missing children? Tell them they can come to Morton & Sons and pick up their kids from day care now."

"You found them?" Ivan exclaimed. "Are they all right?"

"We found them. They're fine. They're just going to want mummy and daddy when they start waking up."

As if on cue, a couple of the toddlers started to wake. Cranky children—and shortly afterward, panicking parents—forestalled any conversation between Rose and the Doctor. Getting the children sorted was a bit difficult, and Rose had to rely on physical descriptions from Ivan to match children to names, and to parents. By about two in the morning, there was just one little girl left.

"Doctor," Rose interrupted, "what about her?" She pointed to the cot he'd set at his feet.

"Well, she's an orphan."

"But who is she?"

He crouched down to see the little girl better. "Morton didn't kill Jenny," he said. "He needed one last child for his machine to work at full capacity, so he converted her."

"They zapped her into a little kid?"

"Yeah."

"Can you reverse it?"

"No. Morton's machine is gone, and I don't have the TARDIS."

"So what are you going to do with her?"

He shrugged. "She's a Time Lord. Nobody in this universe knows how to raise a Time Lord, except me."

"You're going to raise a baby all on your own?" Rose asked.

"She has to be kept safe."

Rose nodded. "When we were in London for the 2012 Olympics, you were building that thing to track down the Isolus pod, and you told me you were a dad once."

"Y-yeah. Yeah, I was."

"But that was before Jenny."

"Yeah. On Gallifrey."

Rose shook her head and bit her lip to keep from crying for him. "Were they there when you... when the Time War ended?"

He only nodded.

Rose sat next to him on the floor. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"It's fine, Rose. It was a long time ago."

"It's not fine," Rose corrected him. "But it will be. You've got her now. What are you going to call her?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"You're the Time Lord."

"I think I'll still call her Jenny. I don't think I could change it now, even if I wanted to. Might change her official name to something a bit more dignified."

"Like what?"

"Jennifer, Genevieve, Geneva..."

"Don't name her Geneva. She'll be teased!"

"Teased? Of course she won't! Why would she be teased for that?"

"The Geneva Convention...?"

"Oh, come on. Who really knows all that much about the Geneva Convention anyway?"

"It's way more important in this world! Kids learn it first year here. Everyone knows the Geneva Convention."

"Everyone except you, you mean."

"Well, even I know a lot about it now, since I did my A-levels here. I'm just saying Geneva isn't the best name. I don't think it makes much of a difference. She'll still be called Jenny."

"Maybe Genevieve, then." As if on cue, the little blond toddler woke, sobbing, her gold-flecked eyes searching for a familiar face. The Doctor took her little hand. "Shh... it's okay. It's gone now. It's only when you're dreaming. You don't have to be afraid of it; it can't hurt you." She continued to cry.

Rose shook her head and lifted the crying child out of the cot. "Shh, hey, it's alright, love. It's just a dream, yeah? You're awake now, and—" Rose turned so Jenny could see the Doctor "—there's your daddy."

The Doctor said something Rose couldn't understand; it sounded almost like a song. Jenny quieted, then reached a hand for him. "That's it..." He took her from Rose and held her close. She looked up at him while he kept talking in that strange melodic language.

He made a strangely strangled noise in his throat and stopped speaking.

"Doctor?"

"I can see them all in her," he said thickly. "They were little just like that. I remember it, every time, looking down into the cot and seeing the flecks of gold that marked their first dream. And then seven years later, sending them away. Eight years... I only got eight years with them." He sniffed, and Rose put a hand over his.

"You'll have all the time in the world with her."

He sniffed again and got to his feet. "Come on. I think we need to go home. All of us."

"Yeah. This place is weird," Rose said. "So is it going to go back to normal? I mean, what happens to the secretaries?"

"Androids. They'll stop working eventually. Morton's machine had so much excess energy that it kept them going and still had enough to need to shift them every hour."

"The floors... they were numbered like a clock."

"Morton must have had it built that way. You have to admit, it was pretty impressive." Rose shut the doors behind them and the Doctor locked them with a flick of his screwdriver.

On the ground floor, Rose stopped, staring at the center wall. "Doctor, wasn't that wall on the other side of the room when we came in?"

"Probably. The wall rotates like the minute hand of a clock. Another reason to have android secretaries; a machine won't question a moving wall." He held the door open for her, and locked it tightly behind them. "The perception filter is gone, too, now that the engine's gone. Everyone will go back to their happy, normal, alien-free lives."

"Everyone except us," Rose commented, unlocking the jeep and climbing into the driver's seat. "Me with my alien liaising job, and you with your alien toddler."

"And my alien technology." He slid into the cab, holding Jenny tightly to him. "Don't drive too fast. We haven't got a child seat in this car, so I'll have to hold her."

"Don't worry. Do you want me to drop you at your place before I go back to the Arsenal? It's not far out of the way."

"If you like." He was too preoccupied with the small child in his arms, with her blond hair and her green eyes and her sleepy little smile.

"How old d'you think she is?" Rose asked. "I mean, she can't be more'n two."

The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver and scanned Jenny. "She's somewhere around three years old."

"She can't be. She's so small!"

"She's Gallifreyan. She'll always look a lot younger than she is."

"Will she regenerate?"

"I don't know." Jenny had fallen asleep again, and Rose thought she looked like a little angel with her white gown and her blond hair. "She's not even entirely Gallifreyan. She wasn't born on Gallifrey."

"Will she be a... what d'you call it? A Time Lady?"

"No... she won't ever have the chance to look into the Untempered Schism. She won't have the training."

"But she's got two hearts, just like yo—he's got."

"I don't know what she'll be. I don't really even know what she is now. I'll just have to figure it out as I go."

Rose parked in front of his building and shut off the jeep. "Are you going to be okay with her by yourself?"

"Rose, I know what I'm doing."

"Do you want me to come by in the morning?"

"I'm fine."

"Don't you want your civ clothes?"

"Oh. Right."

"I'll bring them by sometime tomorrow, yeah?"

"Sure." He swung out of the jeep, holding Jenny tightly to him.

"Give me a ring if you need anything," she called after him.

"I will," he answered. She watched him disappear into the building, then started the jeep and went to the Arsenal to drop it off. She collapsed with exhaustion on the couch in her office, too tired to go back to her flat.


End file.
